On Ash Wednesday, and during the whole season of Lent, Christians around the world remember their mortality. Today, many of us remember it by putting ashes on our foreheads. It evokes that famous passage in the Bible:

We remember intentionally and communally what we all know personally each time we lose a loved one. Our world is broken, we are broken, and we will break.

But are Christians just a bunch of morbid mood killers? No. We sit in the reality of our ashes so that we can fully celebrate it when Christ washes them away. Lent ends with Holy Week! Lent ends with Jesus taking on our mortality, donning our ashes for us, dying on the cross, and then raising from the dead on Easter day. Lent ends with Jesus washing away our ashes in the cleansing water of baptism.